High-Achieving Black Women and Marriage: Not Choosing or Not Chosen?

She was a 40 year old black woman with a Ph.D., ready to find a mate in a city that is only 5% black. One day a tall good-looking black man about her age approached her in the gym. He hadn't finished college but was smart, funny and interesting and she was happy to go out with him. At the end of what she thought was a fun, easygoing dinner he said he was really attracted to her and tried to get her to stay at his place. She refused, telling him it was too fast for her but that she would love to see him again. His response? "Just because you have a Ph.D. you think you're too good for me?" She was so taken aback by his comment she's never forgotten it. That woman was me.

"We have a saying called the 'black girl curse.' A lot of our white friends are married by 25, happily married with kids by 27, and we're like, 'What's the deal with the BGs?' -- and that's black girls."

Popular culture and media such as the ABC Nightline story (from which this quote was taken) continue to feature attractive, successful black women opining about being dissed and dismissed by black men. For years I facilitated black student, faculty and staff support groups on predominantly white campuses and heard similar complaints (especially about high-achieving black men dating and marrying interracially).

In her wonderful book,Why Smart Men Marry Smart Women, Christine Whelan coined the term SWANS® (Strong Women Achievers, No Spouse) and found that "high-achieving women marry at the same rates as all other women; they just do it a little later". Is this true for black SWANS, given all the perceptions to the contrary?

We have been hearing for several years that about 70% of black women are unmarried (including never-married, divorced and widowed). According to the 2009 Current Population Survey (CPS) of the U.S. Census1 nearly twice the percentage of black women (44.5%) as white women (24%) and Asian women (23%) have never been married. They also significantly outnumber never-married Latinas2 (32%).

The average age of first marriage in the U.S. today is about 26 for women and 28 for men, but closer to 30 for the highest educated, so to get a better look at black SWANS I will zoom in on 25-34 year-olds.

INCOME MATTERS

These charts using data from the 2009 CPS show that folks with the highest personal annual incomes are most likely to be married at 25-29 - with two glaring exceptions. In the rarified air of $100,000+ income, 93% of black women and virtually 100% of Latinas are single. By 30-34 things appear to even up. Only 18% of the white and Asian women and 19% of the highest-earning black women have never been married at this age. Christine Whelan's findings about getting married later seem to hold true for black SWANS.

But wait. When we compare currently divorced 30-34 year-olds in this income bracket, there's another glaring difference. A far greater percentage of black women have already been divorced than anyone else in this age group! Could it be that the highest-earning black women do get married at similar rates as other women by their 30s, but also get divorced more quickly? If so, why? Or are these stats misleading due to smaller sample size than the full census that's taken every 10 years? This is food for thought that merits further qualitative and quantitative research.

Since there are fewer black men than women in the non-institutionalized population we need to compare total numbers of men and women instead of percentages when comparing incomes to get a clearer picture of the never-married mate pool. As the charts below show, 25-29 year-old Latina, white and Asian women earning anywhere between $25,000 and $80,000 have lots of males to choose from in their own and higher income brackets.

The story is different for black women. At $25,000 - $39,999 black women outnumber men, and although they do have more male counterparts in the middle-income ranges it's by a much smaller margin than other ethnicities. And at $100,000 and over, black women are the only group who outnumber their men - and by over 1.5 times. There are 157 black women for every 100 black men while there are approximately 450 white men for every 100 white women in this income bracket! Super-successful single young sistahs looking for similar black men face fierce competition compared to white women - a serous challenge for black women who aren't willing to re-assess their "eligibility" criteria.

Gender Gaps in Income by Race: 30-34 Year-Olds

never married Asian by income

Between 30 and 34 the gap is great for black middle class women. There are almost twice as many white men earning $40,000 to $74,999 as white women, but there are 25% more black women than men in the same income range. The gender disparity switches at the highest income levels - but at those incomes there is a surge in black men (but not women) marrying interracially - which I'll talk about in an upcoming post on interracial dating and marriage.

The Higher Ed Gap is As Much About Race as Gender

Using the 2009 CPS census data on highest education level completed, the ratio of females to males with Bachelor's degrees and higher (professional, Master's and doctorates) is:

Age 25-29 Age 30-34Black 1.67 to 1 1.77 to 1White 1.23 to 1 1.24 to 1Asian 1.10 to 1 1.17 to 1Latina .96 to 1 1.56 to 1

The ratio of black females to males is far greater than any other group at 25-29 and gets even bigger at 30-34, where it flips for Latina women. At 30-34 there are 177 women for every 100 men with bachelor's degrees or higher. If we just count people with master's and doctoral degrees, there are 209 black women for every hundred men versus 133 white women, 101 Asian women and 173 Latinas for every hundred of those men. So once again, the fiercest competition for mates within one's own race is among black women...which is certainly not new news to those women in my groups!

Greater competition brings out some of the worst behavior in both men and women when it comes to the qualities that sustain healthy, satisfying relationships. In a pool where there are a lot more women than men, men are rewarded (in the short term) for being more selfish, insensitive and opportunistic and some women begin to lower their own standards on being treated well, simply to avoid being alone.

Should We Be Less Picky?

A majority of women of all races still seek (and are most likely to meet) partners who are racially and ethnically similar to them, have equal (or greater) education and income, and are the same age or a few years older. The pros and cons of limiting the mate selection pool to those who match up on these demographics create personal choices that come with trade-offs.

I am all for loosening rigid notions about compatibility that are more focused on demographics than values. See my Marry Him? post for my take on this. But people's demographics do influence who they are, how they behave and what they value. So rather than excluding whole groups of people out of hand, taking the time to see how someone's race, ethnicity, education, age and income affect their beliefs, attitudes, character and actions gives us a much better shot at a compatible match - with a broader pool of possibilities!

Another fine option is enjoying the fruits of a full and vibrant life while putting marriage on the back burner or off the stove altogether. More and more men and women of all races and ethnicities are savvy, smart, successful singles!

EpilogueI followed my own net-widening advice and was open to finding love with a compatible person regardless of race. I ended up marrying a kind, creative, wonderful man with a Ph.D. who has very similar values... and happens to be white.

1. The CPS of the U.S. Bureau of the Census samples about 50,000 households every month and "is scientifically selected to represent the civilian non-institutionalized population...The sample provides estimates for the nation as a whole". It's not as accurate as the full census that is taken every 10 years, especially where the smallest demographics are concerned (such as the very wealthiest black and Hispanic women), but when trends are changing it gives us a good indicator of where things are going.

People now have the opportunity to check more than one race in the census and I haven't counted the people who check more than one race. Otherwise they could be counted twice, which would result in comparing them to themselves. (For example, bi-racial people may be counted as "white alone or in combination with one or more other races" and "black alone or in combination with one or more other races". Between 2000 and 2008 there's been a 32% increase in the mixed-race population (from 3.9 million to 5.2 million).

Thanks for a great article, Dr. Young. It's not news to me--these are some of the same statistics I found in Don't Bring Home A White Boy and Other Notions That Keep Black Women from Dating Out, and that were highlighted in The Washington Post article on the subject back in February. Income and education make a huge difference in the pool of available black men for black women, many of whom are seeking black men only. Your stats drive home the point that the more successful a black woman is, the more willing she must be to consider a partner of another race or ethnicity.

One more piece of the puzzle comes from a recent panel on the Minority Marriage Gap at the University of Virginia School of Law. Black men who make $150K or more are the LEAST likely men to marry compared to men of other ethnicities in that income range, and compared to black men who make less money. So a successful sister looking for a successful brother for marriage is at a further disadvantage, since this group is unlikely to marry. It just reinforces the necessity to get out of the "black only" dating box and keep one's options open.

I really appreciate your comments and am reading your book with relish right now! I will add a link to Don't Bring Home A White Boy in my upcoming post on interracial relationships. Very interesting data on black men earning $150K! Thanks for sharing it.
Best wishes,
Linda

I got really confused by this article because it starts off talking about education level and then uses data based on income. I would fall into the highest education bracket, but could never dream of making $100K in my field. I think that is common of women of all races- we are more likely to use high levels of education in lower paying fields like science, research, education, social work, etc... Is it education or income that is the variable in question?

Income and education variables were considered separately. The data I presented on education is not based on income data at all. I used the education data from the census (that can be found in the second link under footnote #1). I didn't add another chart since there were so many in this post already - just a quick table illustrating the proportions of men and women with bachelor's degrees or higher by race. I will add a couple of words to the post to make this clearer since others might find that paragraph confusing too. Thanks for the feedback :-).
Linda

You are absolutely right, just because we may have several advanced degrees in, say, STEM fields, doesn't mean we will be making high incomes in those fields. You could have a PhD in a STEM field and only be able to get dishwashing-type work because you are a dark-skinned minority and every time you go to interview in your actual field you get passed over with the "you wouldn't fit in here, sorry, thanks for stopping by" said by a white HR person who is racist, took one look at you and decided you weren't the colour they wanted in the company. Also public-sector jobs, which legally aren't supposed to do that, are becoming more rare. You could have a Master's or PhD in a computer-related field and find that a $12/hour phone support job is all you can get because of the colour of your skin. So education doesn't necessarily correlate with income...or at least not in direct variation. Inverse variation, maybe. Sometimes I look around and it seems as if the high school dropout crowd gets all the highest-paying jobs!!

I enjoyed your article. I live in the DC metro area. I am divorced, have an advanced degree and will turn 40 this year. I had a similar dating experience as mentioned in your opening paragraph. But I think it is worth exploring if Black women living in large metropolitan cities are at a greater disadvantage. I've met some wonderful men, but they are either married (a no-no for me) or enjoying the 8-to-1 ratio just a little too much. I think I may have to change my zipcode if I want to love to find me.

I enjoyed your article. I live in the DC metro area. I am divorced, have an advanced degree and will turn 40 this year. I had a similar dating experience as mentioned in your opening paragraph. But I think it is worth exploring if Black women living in large metropolitan cities are at a greater disadvantage. I've met some wonderful men, but they are either married (a no-no for me) or enjoying the 8-to-1 ratio just a little too much. I think I may have to change my zipcode if I want love to find me.

Now that I have found my future husband, I want to help other educated and ambitious black women do the same. Even though a tiny percentage of bw are finally getting the message that we, too, have options for dating and marriage beyond the tired 'date a black male janitor' advice, I am seeing articles pop up that are trying to get black women to feel guilty for exercising our options. Those who would keep us in a box, shackled to a 'community' that needs us but rarely thanks, are NOT our sisters. Black women are asked to not even consider dating out until we have exhausted all black make options including ex-cons and babydaddies and even then, we are told our reasons for dating out must be "pure" and not a reflection on black men's shortcomings. Articles like yours are so important. Thanks Dr. Young.

http://thefreshxpress.com/2010/03/interracial-dating-is-not-the-only-way-to-soothe-single-black-womens-woes-2/
Please respond to this article so that young black women know they can date out for any reason they want without justifying in to folks like this college senior. It's sad really. I wonder how many dates this girl has been asked on by "the brothas".

Sorry, but I know lots of eligible, single, educated black men. The problem is that women want things that don't exist (tall handsome AND Educated,BUT a Thug soilder who my girlfriends are all jealous of, etc..) Most black women won't date a black man who is not a thug or who does not look like Denzel. So, good luck with that, but it's black women's fault for choosing poorly and only reinforcing bad behavior in black men. This superficiality is rampant in all of today's American women, so don't feel bad.

Thanks for writing a well-balanced article on this topic. That people, regardless of race and ethnicity, tend to want to marry within their own income bracket takes the pressure off black women for being shallow, picky and more than a little ungracious. You also state that many women, regardless of race, lead heathy, happy single lives. You're right: marriage is not the panacea to living a full life. I tip my hat to you for staying open and ultimately finding love. Love your blog, by the way.

Thanks for the kind words, Carolyn. I visited your website and look forward to reading your book (black and (A)broad: traveling beyond the limitations of identity) when it comes out in August - congratulations!
beste wensen,
Linda

Being alone is way better than being beaten up on a regular basis because you've "settled" for someone way lower on the intelligence chain than yourself just because only violent thugs are attracted to you, just because of your skin colour. My father was Irish, so naturally I'm attracted to people who look like him, act like him, and treat me the way he did; so, to you Black people, that means WHITE people...or middle-eastern-looking people. Black men from Africa and the Caribbean and the South or the other ghetto parts of the USA can't get this and at first glance at me think I "belong" to them, and sometimes even when they haven't asked my NAME first start ordering me around and telling me what to do and who to talk to and who I "need" to be with! What part of that "culture" do I deserve, again?! The father who RAISED me, (also my biological father, for those who look at me and can't believe I'm half-Irish) was NONE of those things. My current boyfriend looks like a younger version of my father, and I've had black thug-types actually get in-between us and tell me I "shouldn't be with him." As he was in the Israeli Army they conveniently wait until he's out of the room and out of earshot, naturally. I'm going for my PhD in Mathematical Computational Biophysics and he's in medical school. Anyway, it's better to be alone than be beaten up on a regular basis by some uneducated thug with an entitlement problem who's insecure because you're smarter than him. The way the kind of black men who take a liking to me, treat me, makes me wish I believed in carrying a gun.

To 'Dasboot': I think it's time we put away once and for all this 'college-educated black women like educated thugs' horse crap. I am 27, and from Fairfield County, CT. I went to prep school and wear Lilly Pulitzer and JCrew. I have NEVER wanted to date or marry a thug of any color. What would be the point? So I could commute to my job at a private school from the projects and introduce this thug to all my upper middle class friends and colleagues? Take him to my 10 year prep school reunion in Greenwich wearing Timbs? What a chuckle! The very premise is absurd and shows how little YOU know real solidly middle to upper middle class black women.

When women like me DO marry black, white or other, the men we choose are NOT thugs, they tend to be nice middle class guys from nice families. The man who I have chosen to marry is probably the dorkiest half-Jewish guy ever, and I would have loved to have been asked out by a black guy of his caliber (professional degree, attractive, attracted to ME, no kids, WANTS to marry, fun, comfortable in multiracial, middle-class settings), but it never happened, not in high school or college or grad school, or during my post-collegiate dating years from 2004 to 2008 when I met my now-fiance. I am sure these guys 'exist out there', just like albino whales and four-leaf clovers 'exist out there', I just haven't ever seen many and didn't intend to waste my life searching high and low, and under rocks and whatnot. So I think it's time we laid this tired meme to rest.

And where is this "all black women want Denzel" thing coming from? I think just in Jimi Izrael's "I want to sell books" head. Denzel is 56 years old, older than my father! Yeah, he's all right looking, I guess, but I don't know ANY college-educated black women in my age range (27) who think he is some male ideal and is holding out for his replica.

I wish these 'black women like thugs type' would also STOP referring to Waiting to Exhale as somehow ruining black women's realistic hopes for love with a black man, because that movie came out in 1995 when I was 13. If we are going to honestly discuss these issues TODAY in 2010, the discussion needs to be relevant to the younger, black women graduating colleges and dating today and stop letting older folks (sorry Sherri Shepherd(43) and Jacqui Reed(43)) dominate the discussion and speak for us, because MOST people marry in their 20s and 30s.

I know NO successful bw with a thug. its a stereotype to keep bw down and trust me as women of all races, educated or not, have a small percentage of them dealing with losers. Maybe if less men would be so irresponsible, it wouldnt happen at all.But this society tells women that they are nothing without a man- this is something punched into a female's head from birth. Itjust so happens that most black men are losers with no education...not every bw wants to date out or wants to be single- so some have to make a choice.But it's very unlikely that most educated bw- the MILLIONS of us are with thugs. Especially since we are told every day that we are single...where is the correlation? We are dating thugs but are also single???
Kill the racist noise.

Thank you, E! My sentiments exactly! And yes, there are successful men of color, who do not look like Denzel, and are not thugs. Most are married by their 40's and may even be on their second marriage. Of course women (both African American and non-African-American alike) may want a Denzel, or even a Bradd Pitt for that matter-- but thugs (or even a hint of thug) do not fit anywhere in our circles. That is not necessarily a race thing--but a class thing.

As a race, we are too consumed with money, education and race. We have come so far becoming educated that we have become stupid. As a race, we are disappearing with marriages that ultimately choose against being black, etc. Tiger Woods, and ultimately leave all the wealth, success, and legacy to white society. The destruction and ultimate demise of blacks is on the wall. Soon, the "mixed and affluent" will agree that more "sightly" black folks are vermin and should be "eradicated". While I don't have a problem with whom anyone dates or marries, I do see the writing on the wall. As an endangered species, will anyone come to my aid. I am an educated, 100K plus, happily married black man, that is looked as an aberration. We have to start once again looking at rebuilding the values that were our strength as a race. As stated in other threads, being single is not a curse in society anymore. Consider using that freedom to help rebuild values and opportunities for others, before we are all "blended" out of society.

I find it refreshing to know that our successful bw rates are marriage are really no different than other successful women, it's just we marry later. I can see how this plays out. I myself am willing to wait most of my life for the best partner. I won't be having children, so I have no timeline and I am very relaxed in finding the best mate for me. During this time, I spend a lot of energy cultivating myself for the partner I want, and I do believe when I reach my best potential, I will finally meet him because we attract people based on the energy we put out into the universe and into ourselves. Also, I don't buy into the "fierce competition" perspective. I don't compete for a man ever. If he's interested, he's interested...if not then I'm out of there. I also date interracially and older which is why I've never felt limited...but I do feel challenged in meeting the most compatible man, simply because I don't mesh with everyone effortlessly. Some people require more work than others.

I find this article to be very interesting. I think that more successful Black women need to open up their options and start dating/marrying men of other races. In my city, I see a lot of Black men from all income levels with the most plain-looking, homely white girl who has no education beyond high school. Black women need to get out of their fantasy world and stop thinking that a Barack Obama type black man is going to sweep them off of their feet. If a successful Black woman really wants marriage and family, she'd be a lot better off dating white males. Check out Evia Moore black female interracial blog. She has pictures of successful Black women of all skin shades (including very dark skinned ones) happily married to white males. I am a Black woman myself, and even though I am not married, I've dated several white males in the past and they were some of my best, most enjoyable dates. I have a few Black female friends that hold good jobs and married men that were beneath them as far as education levels were concerned. These women ended up divorced. Black men have been dating/marrying white women for years. It's high time for Black women to expand their options when it comes to dating and mate selection.

You're right, BUT! - it may take going out of this country to find one. For the most part unless you hang around synagogues or in university Physics departments you won't find one who is the least bit interested in you because of the AmeriKKKan stereotypes about "black" women...and by that I mean even dark-skinned Native Americans, dark-skinned Latinos, and dark-skinned South Asian/Pacific Islanders. Chances are if you stay in the USA looking, even if you go to those allegedly "enlightened" parts like New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, etc, you won't be able to find one without having to beat the uneducated black thug-types off of you with a baseball bat. Like I said, unless you take to crashing Bar Mitzvahs or going to synagogue. In AmeriKKKa you find the ones who have bought into the stereotypes and steer clear of "us" like the plague. You almost have to fly off to some country where they haven't got American TV or something.

Since I read an article in The Economist about how black women have much lower marriage rates than other races of women I've been very pessimistic about the future for me and my peers. I'm only in college and I think I'm too young to start obsessing about what age my friends and I will get married at.

I've read in multiple studies that black women receive far less messages on online dating sites than other races of women and I've seen comments on various websites from black women about how hard it is to find non-black men who are attracted to them. On the flip side, I've also read comments from black women about how it is easier to date non-black men because they tend to care less about certain physical characteristics (dark skin/light skin, "good hair"/natural hair, etc.)

I'm choosing to have a positive attitude and be open to interracial dating.

By the way, there was an article on racialicious.com in December of last year and all the commenters were trying to figure out the differences between black female and white female marriage rates at different ages. This article would have been unbelievably helpful lol!

Enjoyed this article. I think it provides a much more realistic picture of the potential for love. I am fortunate to be surrounded by black men and black women who have happy, healthy marriages, most of which didn't occur till after we hit 30.

And I can appreciate the desire to get rid of some of the old stereotypes, most of which never applied to the socioeconomic group this article pertains to. While we're at it, as a black man who fits in this demographic, I'd like to lay rest the stereotype that educated black men marry white women. I laugh because you are more likely to see the brotha with corn rows and jeans hanging off his rear walking around with a white woman than you are a black dude in a suit yet the former can somehow be thought of as "keepin' it real" and accepted while the latter is considered a sellout and full of self-hatred.

Like this article points out, most people seek out similar partners, and that applies to educated black men as well. To be fair, I know a lot of black men that will date non-black women but even most of them want to marry a black woman. Most Baraks out there are looking for Michelle, not Misty, so hang in there ladies!

Just to emphasize what others have already said, most educated, middle class black women do NOT want a thug. What would you talk about? How would he fit in around your friends and coworkers? It's a lame stereotype meant to villify black women. Just to prove this, let's put stats and common sense to work. If educated black women only wanted "thug soldiers" then we'd all be married. Why? Because there's an abundance of "thugs" out there to choose from. So, if that were true, the black SWANS phenomenon wouldn't exist. Stats prove that the more educated a black woman is, the more likely she is to be single. Why? Because she's looking for someone from the same or similar educational and economic background. And there are fewer of these men available. It's basic supply and demand. So the thug theory makes little sense.

The more educated a white woman is, the more likely she is to have a similarly-educated husband (also white). The more educated a black, Native American or Latina woman is, the more likely we are to be single because the availability of men we can have a conversation with, drops off like flies the higher up the educational ladder we go. (It seems to also keep us from getting jobs in our fields, but I digress) The more education "we" have, the more likely all our peers are to be white or Asian, and that's the cohort which is LEAST interested in us. I'm in an area right now of the country in which the only people I can hold a conversation with without getting bombarded with the racist "where you from, where you from, where you from originally?...well you don't have an 'accent'..." crap, is the Physics department at what passes for a "State University." (It's more the equivalent of a really big High School in that the Physics department is pretty much the only department in which anyone knows any math past Calculus, whatsoever...or at least they're supposed to) And most of my peers are white, Asian or middle eastern. Immigrants, not even "-American" ones.
My boyfriend is my boyfriend because the first thing he ever asked me first time he laid eyes on me was if he could use my Macintosh to initialize his iPhone. (that and, when I looked at him I thought I was looking at a reincarnated, younger version of my father.) And in 6 years never once has he said "where you from?" He was born in Brooklyn and raised in Israel and people kept asking HIM that even before asking his name, in the hostel where we met, so I got the pleasure of seeing "it" happen to someone else, someone "whiter" than me....that was fun....
If the first thing someone says to me is "where you from?" without asking my NAME first, I'm going to call them out on racism and probably have a few nasty words in there too (by now), not DATE them.

Ok, I'm a black American woman, 39 years old, and a lawyer (not a litigator). I studied very hard in school, went to prep school and public ivies, for my education. I have a younger brother who is a PhD in the hard sciences, and our parents are black professionals from the civil rights "sit in" generation. We were raised upper middle class after much striving by my folks in a majority black city. I've NEVER wanted to date a thug, a pimp, or "player," and I resent all of the articles that suggest that black women want to do the same. I work hard, work out, try to eat in a healthy way (no junk food) and go to church from time to time. I can count the times on ONE HAND-- from high school (went to all girls school)to today--a black man has asked me on a date or has even expressed some type of interest in me (and no, I don't think I'm bad looking, either, if I may say so). For some reason, since college, I have been approached (subtly--took a while for me to understand) by white (mostly Jewish) guys (older than I) for dating. But, given my background, I was suspicious that those guys were ONLY interested in experimentation (especially the married professor creep married to a black woman). My point is, you have to expand your networks and use common sense. Thugs, of any race, have never been attractive to me. Neither have ballers or rappers. I think it's more of a class issue. Now, if I could only heed my own advice. Maybe I should just give in to the Jewish 6'5" bronze adonis who has been always a bit more friendly than normal for the past 6 years and just forget about what everybody else thinks....

You're LUCKY. You have a law degree and you don't attract thugs?! I WISH I were so lucky. And if you have a problem with Jewish boys then no wonder you're single. Are you anti-Semitic or something? My Jewish boyfriend is GREAT. I guess the grass really is "greener" on the other side of the fence. I wish I could attract ONLY nice Jewish boys - younger than me, of course. I have a law degree too, by the way, and I too am tired of litigating.

I for one have no problem with women who do what biology tells them; marry for status, wealth ,power or whatever. However, i do have a problem when the same biology finds them obselete and wanting and then, all too predictably,they complain loud and long as if they don't behave similarly. If they are going to judge the value of a man by these standards then the woman should expect to be jugded by how they look. The real tradegy is we haven't figured out how demeaning and counterproductive this arrangement is. Overall, it seems in American culture, we have a puritanical view of relationships and how brutal and judgmental and selfrighteous we are ( men and women) in the pursuit of a mate. We also forget how we define the masculinity and femninity of each other by the weight of our reciprocal expectations. Women want to look good in order to attract the "best" mate, often times, only to realize ( look at divorce numbers) later that best nate doesn't mean best choice. Men, like the rappers in the videos, want to show that they are physically strong, and wealthy in order to attract the "best mate". Two of the biggest hurdles to having meaningful,longterm relatiionships; is our reliance on old inflexible models of behavior and; our misunderstanding of how and why we behave as we do towards each other

Submitted by Disturbed by this phenomenon on November 11, 2011 - 9:14am

Hi Dr. Young. I really appreciate this article. I am 23 years old. I currently have a Masters in Forensic Psychology. I am Clinical Psychology Doctoral student. In December, I will have met the requirements for my second Masters in Clinical Community Psych and will finish my doctorate in 2014. I am young, but well-educated and this is already a phenomenon that I see as a problem. I don't date often because I have standards. However, those standards don't include having a professional degree. In the same token, something that I've run into is dating guys that are jealous of what I have or think that it's necessary for them to achieve the same level of education that I have in order for us to work. Although that is not the case, I can never seem to debunk the myths. I however, refuse to deny who I am and what I want to achieve in my life in order to get or to please a man. I searched for statistics on this when I woke up this morning because I had a conversation about this very thing with a caucasian friend of mine yesterday. Most of my caucasian friends that I attend school with are married or in relationships soon-to-be married. I looked at some very successful African American female professors that teach in my program and 2 out of 3 of them are in their late 40's/early 50's, have never been married, and do not have children. Yes, I want to be successful in my career, but what is very unsettling to me is why it has to be one or the other. I'm not sure that I want to wait until I'm in my 40's to start having children. When I'm 40, I want my children to be in high school, or at least very close for that matter. I just really wish that things were different. I think that I'm going to have to cross color barriers because I feel like there is no other option at this point.

The belief Males should be strong allows more aggressive treatment of Males beginning as early and possibly earlier than one year. This is coupled with much "less" kind, stable, verbal interaction and less mental/emotional/social support, knowledge, and skills for fear of coddling. This increases over time and continued by society from peers and teachers to others in society. This creates more social/emotional distance from parents and other authority figures who have knowledge; higher average stress that hurts learning and motivation to learn; more activity due to need for stress relief; more defensiveness and wariness of others further hindering emotional and social growth necessary for information age communication; and higher muscle tension (creating more pressure on pencil and tighter grip) that hurts writing and motivation to write. It creates much lag in development creating a learned sense of helplessness in school. This differential treatment continues on through adulthood, almost fixing many Males onto roads of failure and more escape into more short-term areas of enjoyment. Also the giving of love based on achievement cause many Males falling behind in academics to turn their attention toward video games and sports, risk taking to receive small measures of love/honor not received in the classroom. Since girls are given basic love, honor, respect, and care simply for being girls, this also creates differences in the classroom and later economically.

Since African American and Hispanic Males fall in the lower socioeconomic areas more so, the differential treatment (more stress, more allowance of catharsis of aggressive treatment of Males while maintaining more protective caring treatment for Female children, this amplifies the differential treatment thus creating larger differences in the classroom and later economically.

Since both boys and girls, later men and women are both taught the horrible genetics model of learning and not the environmental model, which is creating this difference in achievement, this then creates both lower self-esteem from feelings of inferiority and much more preparation for more harsh treatment by women who use both the genetics model and our freedom of expression to give more abusive treatment with impunity. Since women believe in the genetics model, if only from the more stable, caring treatment and the resulting achievement, then this creates more continued actions on the part of those women and other women in the media, workplace, stores, etc. to do the same. As women move more upward, this creates more isolation from normal feelings for others and more feelings of superiority. This alone creates more social blindness in terms of words, tones, inflection, voice, along with the genetic model, less care for others in lower areas of the social plane.

These changes in roles of earnings from differential treatment are creating feelings of superiority from women in general and feelings of lower self-esteem from men in general. So many Males from generally lower socioeconomic brackets are hurt in multiple areas of society. When they receive a feeling of hurt from a woman the effect is felt four or five times ever intended by the woman. This creates much more sensitivity and even avoidance of such women in the future.
http://learningtheory.homestead.com/Theory.html

Well now that so many women have their Careers today which many of them are very power money hungry, selfish, spoiled, and very greedy as well since they will Only want the Best and will Never settle for Less which really is the Reason why many of us Good men are still Single today and always will be.